Identify your objectives and find an idea

Here's what you'll do in this section:

Identify your personal objectives
Come up with an idea
Do some preliminary market research to validate your idea
Come up with a high-level list of the problems your application will solve

Your personal objectives

So...why do you really want to develop an app? Here are a few common answers:

to make money
to gain experience for your resume or learn something new
for something fun to do in your spare time
all of the above

Let's assume you haven't decided anything yet—not even whether you want to develop for Palm's webOS, Apple's iPhone, Blackberry's...Blackberry, Google's Android, Microsoft's Windows Mobile, Symbian, Maemo...you get the picture. How you approach the application development process, what kind of application you ultimately decide develop, and even what platform you develop should be rooted in your overall objectives—or you may end up somewhere you don't want to be.

Making money

money and phones If your goal is to make money, here are some questions that you need to ask yourself before you begin:

How will your application make money? Will you charge a one-time up-front fee for the application? Will you charge on a subscription basis? Will it be ad-supported? Will you give it away free, but charge for plugins or upgrades?
How big is your market? How many people could potentially install your app? In other words, how many people own a compatible device? How many more will own a compatible device by the time your application is finished? 5 years from now? Developing an app for the Newton PDA will almost ensure you have the market cornered, but when your user base is 10 people it won't really matter.
How will you differentiate yourself from competition? Will your app be unique? Will it be easily duplicated? Has it been done before, but you think you can do it better? It's much easier to differentiate yourself in a market with 1000 apps than one with 100,000. The iPhone has huge market share, but a correspondingly large and well-established developer community. If you join the iPhone community, you'll most likely be a small fish in a big pond. If you develop for webOS, you will be a bigger fish in a smaller pond (for now).
How much time and money are you ready to invest in developing your application? Do you have a team at your disposal or are you working alone? Can you afford to spend the time and money it will take to design, build, test, and successfully market your application? How will you provide support for your application?

If this is a serious investment or your main source of income, you'll want to look into making a business plan and making sure you can get a return on your investment of time and money. We won't cover creation of a business plan here; there are ample resources available on the net.

Learning/Gaining experience

chalkboard and apple You will definitely learn something new if you invest time in building a mobile application. You may even end up with something interesting or even impressive to put on your resume. It's a tough job market out there and being able to say you built the first webOS Facebook app could put you ahead of the other candidate who only developed the first webOS MySpace app.

But before you cloister yourself in your room for a few months, be sure to think long-term. If your career aspirations are to become the best database programmer at Oracle or the next Steve Jobs, there are probably better ways to invest your time. Don't jump into mobile development just because it's "the trend" or because you've read half this article and you don't want to back out now. While it's safe to say that mobile application development is a rapidly expanding industry and for many people it's the right place to be; just be sure it's the right place for you.

Let's assume you've decided your long-term career goal is to be a big-shot in the mobile industry and you want to start by developing an application. But on what platform? The mobile landscape is hugely fragmented now with each major mobile OS sporting a different architecture, and each offering an opportunty to a specific skillset: iPhone for Objective-C, Blackberry for J2ME, webOS for JavaScript/HTML/CSS, and the list goes on. If you're here, you most likely want to develop for webOS. However, if you feel your career path is taking you toward traditional application development, you might want to consider the iPhone or Blackberry platforms. If you think web development is the way of the future (and who doesn't?:), then webOS is your better option. If your major goal is just to learn about mobile development and not to make a pile of money, perhaps the best way to keep your options open is to build a very simple application for every platform to learn about the differences between them.

In addition to developing a mobile application, you may want to follow industry trends on various mobile news sites, attend a few mobile industry conferences or get some sort of mobile certification.

webOS: A great opportunity

webOS is a great opportunity to develop an application that can meet your objectives, whatever they may be. Being a new platform, there are plenty of opportunities to differentiate yourself with a unique application or a unique twist on a popular idea. Right now you may be looking at a relatively small user base (although nobody except Palm and Sprint really know how many for sure), but think beyond the Pre and Pixi. Palm has already stated that the Pre would be the first of many devices, and they will most likely not all be phones. Netbooks are a relatively new space and webOS could make a fantastic network operating system. If you believe Palm and you believe that webOS has potential, then by getting started now you may get a jump on a lot of the competition that are taking a "wait and see" approach with webOS.

Even if you're just looking to learn something new, webOS is a great place to start. The skills you learn in developing an application with web technologies like JavaScript and HTML/CSS are probably the most transferrable of any mobile development platform in existence.

The Idea

Let's assume you've settled on webOS as your development platform. Now the question is—what to build?

If you're just looking for experience, build whatever interests you. Maybe that's a Facebook client, a streaming music app, or an app that reminds you to feed your fish.

If your primary goal is to make money, you'll want to think about more than just what interests you. You can't simply go by what's hot, either. Twitter is currently hot, but there are already 10 Twitter apps available in the Palm webOS catalog and according to Chuq (developer community manager at Palm), hundreds of applications for the Palm webOS early-access program were for Twitter clients.

You want to build something that's both innovative and has broad enough appeal to be successful. Innovative can mean something new, like the Shazam application was when it was first released, or an innovative twist on something that's been done before, like, say, an application that mashes up Facebook and location-based data to show you where your Facebook friends are on an interactive map. Think about user groups with specialized needs. The original Palm Pilot was very popular in the medical community for medical references texts that were available on PalmOS devices. Remember too that innovation could involve being the first to bring a tried-and-true idea to a new platform like webOS.

As you brainstorm, jot all your ideas down on paper, no matter how crazy they may seem. I'd encourage you to do this part on actual paper; not on computer. Paper is actually a great medium for free thinking, allowing you to connect ideas and cross things out at will.

If you're still having trouble coming up with an idea, ask yourself: what someone could do with a mobile application that they generally couldn't or wouldn't do with a desktop application? These articles are great may help kick start your thinking:

Validating your idea

When you've got a list of ideas, it's time to do some market research. In addition to the webOS catalog, a good place for market research is the largest mobile application repository currently available—the iPhone app store. Yes, that app store that developers love to hate. Well, while the market is becoming saturated very quickly, it is still young, and the saying "there's an app for that" is not quite universally true—yet. Test your ideas against the largest catalog of mobile applications on the planet. If your idea isn't there, then it is either:

truly unique; something that nobody has yet brought to market (but may be in development),
something that won't work due to limitations of the iPhone platform, or
something that is so specialized it would appeal to a very limited audience.

If (a), you may have just found your idea. Consider doing some additional research or at the very least, bouncing the idea off of close friends and associates to make sure it's not actually (c). If (b), familiarize yourself with the capabilities of webOS and then reconsider your idea. With its deep-rooted support for web techonlogies and its unique Palm Synergy services you may find some interesting opportunities that other mobile platforms may not offer. If (c), you may want to do some additional research to make sure it's not actually (a). If you do the research, then find out it actually is (c), don't despair. Even if only 0.1% of the device's total user base would be interested in the app, that may still be enough to meet your objectives if the user base is in the millions. After all, the original Palm was a hit with the medical community which meant that medical apps could be profitable even if only a fraction of Palm owners were interested in using them.

There are also a number of other up-and-coming mobile app repositories to look at besides the iPhone app store; the Android Market and Blackberry App World come to mind.

After you've given it some thought and think you've settled on an idea, it's time to plan your mobile app project.